I’ve missed posting prayers for a couple of weeks, but I’m back with a good one to pray and meditate on.
This week’s prayer:
Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church;
and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
One thing I just love about praying the Prayers for the Week from the Book of Common Prayer is how it helps shift my focus from ME to WE. I’m “forced” to remember that I’m part of a family, a community, a church, and a world.
As I pray these words it occurs to me how often we feel the responsibility to cleanse and protect God’s church on our own. We criticize, we send anonymous letters, we tweet, we gossip, we call down fire...usually without stopping to ask the Holy Spirit to do His work in the way that He wants to do His work.
I don’t usually think of God’s “continual mercy” as the means by which He would cleanse, protect and govern, but this prayer causes me to slow down and consider that God’s ways are higher than our ways. Mercy, after all, isn’t weak; it’s powerful, it’s at work, and it always points us to Jesus.
We are governed by His goodness — oh, what a thought!
Experiencing His goodness means that we can rest in the knowledge that He is watching over us at all times, helping us to fulfill His purpose in the world: to bring about the renewal of all of creation for His glory.
Have a great week,
Rachel
